In the field of manufacturing home appliances, particularly, relatively large home appliances such as dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, built-in ovens and ranges, etc. such appliances are traditionally assembled in a manufacturing plant and then must be packaged before shipment in large lots via truck, rail or other method of transport. In order to ensure that the appliances are transported in a protected manner and relatively clean environment without damage, such appliances have in the past been packaged in conventional corrugated cardboard boxes or plastic or combinations of both. Such prior packaging techniques with corrugated cardboard boxes have involved placing foam bases, such as conventional polystyrene blocks, in the bottom of the box to support the appliance within the box and provide shock absorption to avoid damage resulting from shocks that occur during transit. Corner inserts have also been installed within the box to protect the corners of the appliance, and in many cases a foam top insert is also installed to protect the top of the appliance. As may be appreciated, such packaging can be manually labor intensive, and often requires unnecessary movement of the appliance into the box using large machinery, which can result in damage to the appliance prior to packaging and shipment.
More recent trends in packaging have involved packaging such appliances with clear films, also employing shock absorbing supporting and corner members to protect the appliance in a manner which can provide a dustproof, damage resistant, theft safe and multi-sided protection. In a vast majority of cases, the trend has been to package such home appliances using shrink wrap film techniques. In shrink wrapping, an oversized film is applied onto a load and subsequently shrunk by means of heat. The heat makes the film contract around the load providing transport stability. However, shrink wrapping while providing some desirable features, is more costly then desired and time intensive, for example, as a result of requiring heat application to the film to cause it to shrink, resulting in time lost for required high throughput operations.
Sleeve wrapping is another technique employed, and a wide range of such packaging machinery is commercially available. One sleeve wrapping technique involves wrapping a product followed by vertical shrink columns. An alternative technique involves a sleeve wrapper followed by a shrink frame. While appearing to improve throughput as compared to shrink wrapping, sleeve wrapping still requires multiple steps and does not necessarily provide the optimum dustproof, theft safe and multi-sided protection required.
More recently, stretch hood wrapping techniques and machines have been employed in particular for pallet loads such as beverage pallets, in which an undersized film hood is stretched hydraulically to a dimension slightly larger than the outer circumference of the load. Four grippers that have stretched the film traveled down the load, applying the film and finally securing it underneath the pallet. The stretch of the film over the product at the top and engagement at the bottom of the pallet provides an overlap of the film over the top and bottom edges to ensure a reliable hold between the pallet and the load and to secure the pallet for storage and transportation. The film memory causes the film to tightly wrap the load.
Stretch hood wrapping has more recently been applied to package home appliances in manufacturing processes where either a complete home appliance is installed on or the appliance is manufactured on a base made of shock absorbing material, for example, expanded polystyrene, which is somewhat flexible. Once the appliance has been assembled, the base, which includes slots or pockets at the corners thereof, has four vertically extending posts, typically also made of expanded polystyrene for shock absorption and protection of the appliance, which are installed at the corners thereof and in abutment with the corners of the appliance. A small partial box cover is then installed over the top to hold the four posts together against the appliance and the hood is then stretched hydraulically down the load over the box cover and secured underneath and over the edges of the polystyrene base and over the edge of the box cover.
Such an application has been considered desirable because it generally provides a cheaper dustproof, theft safe and five-sided protection for the load, for example, for home appliances such as dishwashers, built-in ovens, washing machines, dryers and ranges. The film also may be perforated if desired. Further, whether perforated intentionally or unintentionally, the film propagation is much less than the shrinkwrap film. While functioning well to provide a sealed protective package, the application of stretched hood wrapping on packages employing a base made of somewhat flexible material such as expanded polystyrene has created certain complications. More specifically, the stretched hood wrapping application can result in an unstable package for transport when one package is stacked upon another. It has been discovered that as the bottom of the base is engaged by the stretched hood to provide a reliable hold between the flexible base and load, that deformation of the corners of the base can occur, and the flat base which previously provided a stable platform is no longer flat but has a curve at one or two opposite edges. This results in an unstable package for transport purposes, particularly when the packages are stacked for transport or stored in a conventional manner. No base can be used on one edge or both opposite edges.
In accordance with the invention, there is provided a package, method and kit for stretch hood packaging of relatively large home appliances of the type mentioned previously on relatively flexible bases, which avoids the problems resulting from deformation of the base upon which the appliance is supported.